


By His Bootlaces

by prudence_dearly



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-05
Updated: 2011-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 15:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prudence_dearly/pseuds/prudence_dearly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For mergatrude for the Help Queensland fandomaid auction. Thanks to exbex for beta and hand-holding.</p>
    </blockquote>





	By His Bootlaces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mergatrude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mergatrude/gifts).



> For mergatrude for the Help Queensland fandomaid auction. Thanks to exbex for beta and hand-holding.

This whole day starts out badly. I wake up alone, which hasn’t been a given in the past few months. I’m lying there on my back, staring at the ceiling, and then I jerk like a salmon and I’m out of bed and brushing my teeth, because for those four or five seconds when I was keeping still and quiet, my brain went places I do not want it going. I run my coffee machine extra long and loud. I make a mess in the bedroom while I get dressed. It’s possible I drive dangerously on the way to work, just to keep my mind occupied. By the time I get to the station I’m thinking I can keep this up all day. I can definitely keep my mind off of what happened. Or didn’t happen.

“Hey, Kowalski,” Dewey yells from his desk when I walk in the door. “You know what a judge calls evidence that has nothing to do with elephants? Irrelephant!” He and Huey collapse laughing.

“That’s hilarious,” I say, hanging my coat on the stand and pulling my chair out. “You guys should run away and join the circus.”

“Do me a favour,” says Vecchio from his desk. “Go grab the fire extinguisher so I can hose them down.”

Now, usually, one of two things would happen here. If I’m in a good mood, I’d go get the fire extinguisher and we’d have some fun. If I’m in a bad mood, I’d tell Vecchio to go get it himself; what am I, his little sister? But I can’t figure out if I’m in a good mood or a bad mood, so I’m just sitting here looking at him.

The thing is, yesterday I told Vecchio I love him. I don’t think he heard me, because we were having sex at the time. We’re usually pretty noisy – okay, I’m usually pretty noisy – and I guess he didn’t catch what I said, due to everything else I was saying and besides, his head was between my legs so maybe that muffled the sound of my voice. Whatever – the bottom line is, he didn’t say it back. And I feel like I jumped off a cliff and I’m still waiting to hit the ground.

“Kowalski?” says Vecchio, like he’s checking whether I’m awake. “Are you in there?”

“Yeah. Sorry. What’s wrong with you?” Because I just saw that he’s got a walking stick leaning against his desk.

Vecchio makes a face. “Sprained my ankle last night,” he says. He had a basketball game at the Y last night. That’s why he didn’t stay over at my place. And again, usually I’d make a crack about Vecchio being too old to play ball, but instead I just sit there. Vecchio shoots me a look, like he’s wondering what’s up with me, but I flip open the case file on my desk and get down to work. And if that’s not a cry for help, I don’t know what is.

 

*

 

“Okay, Kowalski, what’s up?”

Vecchio has me cornered by the coffee pot in the break room. I should’ve heard him sneaking up behind me, with his cane tap-tapping on the linoleum, but I guess I’m not at my sharpest today.

“I feel weird,” I say, because it’s the first thing that pops into my head that isn’t, “For Christ’s sake, do you love me back?!” which is, of course, what I really want to say.

“Are you getting sick?” His eyes are narrowed, like he’s on to me.

“Maybe. Hey, you know what I need? I need that chicken soup from the deli by the park. I bet that would make me feel better.”

“I bet drinking less coffee would help, too,” says Vecchio, snagging the cup out of my hand as I edge past him. He takes a deep slurp of the coffee, and twists up his mouth. “What, did you dump half the sugar bowl in here?”

“You don’t like it, make your own,” I say, grabbing the cup back. Our fingers brush, and for a moment it’s like everything’s back to normal, and I remind myself it’s not Vecchio’s fault if he didn’t hear me last night. Maybe I should repeat myself. Maybe I should tell him, right here and now, that I’m in love with him. I love you, Ray.

My mouth’s open and I’m drawing in breath when the break room door opens and Dewey sticks his stupid head in. “Vecchio! Your cellphone’s ringing off the hook. Would you get out here and answer it before I throw it out the window?” Dewey knows what happens when anyone who isn’t Vecchio answers Vecchio’s cell.

Vecchio rolls his eyes and limps off, and I’m standing there like a suit of clothes with no one in it.

 

*

 

“Who was it?” I ask when I get back to my desk. Vecchio’s fiddling with his cellphone. He upgraded a few weeks back and still hasn’t gotten the hang of it.

“Don’t know,” he says. “It was a real bad line, I could hardly hear a thing. He was saying something about Filtrum. That’s the professor with the line in illegal imports, isn’t it?”

I set down my coffee and dig through the paperwork mountain on my desk. There’s a file in here somewhere on Professor Phillip Filtrum, a big shot in theoretical physics and smuggling depleted uranium. Me, I thought that was what you get when you drink too much beer, but according to the internet and US Customs, it’s a lot more serious than that. Vecchio and I had been looking into the guy until last week when we got distracted by the most recent body washed up on the shores of the lake.

“Filtrum,” I say, pulling out the file and flicking it open. “We were supposed to get a call from the freighter captain when he arranged his next delivery.”

“Better get down there,” says Vecchio, and begins the five-minute process of dragging his leg out of the drawer he’s got it propped up on, and dropping his cane and scrabbling around for it and eventually getting to his feet.

“Forget it, Vecchio,” I say. “I’ll take this one.”

It’s probably best I stay out of Vecchio’s way right now. Most of the time we work great together, and now that we’re regularly having sex I no longer get so distracted by fantasising about having sex with him. That sure didn’t help my attention span, or our solve rate. These days, I shelve any thoughts about Vecchio’s neck, or Vecchio’s fingers, or Vecchio’s smart mouth, or the way his eyes seem to go warm when he smiles at me. I know I’ll get to enjoy all that later. But on this particular day I figure if he gives me one of those smiles I might suddenly yell “I love you!” at the top of my voice, and that would be plain embarrassing.

“You shouldn’t go alone. The guy sounded agitated.”

“Oh yeah?” I give him an up-and-down look. “And exactly how much help would you be?”

“Hey, my trigger finger still works,” he snaps.

“Take a load off, Hopalong,” I say. “It’s probably a false alarm. At best we might have to set up a stake-out. I’ll call if anything cool happens.”

 

*

 

The rain’s just starting up as I pull into the industrial lot down by the docks. Big grey curtains are drifting in off the lake, light enough at the moment to leave a delicate pearly layer over everything. It’s pretty, in a cold, damp kind of way; the kind of weather that makes you want to curl up on the couch with a bottle of beer and someone friendly. I drive slowly between ranks of empty-looking warehouses. The whole lot’s pretty much deserted. When I finally find the freight company’s offices, way down near the water, they look empty, too, but when I skip up the steps and try the door, it’s unlocked.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m coming down the steps, and this time I’m not skipping because the rain’s really settled in and I don’t want to slip and break my neck. I scoot across the tarmac to the GTO and jump in.

The freighter captain, Henning, didn’t call Vecchio. He’s in hospital with a burst appendix, and his ship is halfway across the lake, running bales of wool from one place to another. So either whoever called earlier was yanking our chain for no good reason, or he’d got something on Filtrum but didn’t get the chance to say what.

I pull out of the dockyard and head back into town, half my mind on Filtrum, the other half still stuck on Vecchio. Traffic’s snarled up where some crazy cab driver ran an orange light and caused a fender bender, and while I’m waiting to get past I decide to call Fraser. There aren’t that many people I can talk to about me and Vecchio, and since I’m looking for some sane advice I won’t be calling Frannie.

There was one time that I drunk-dialled Fraser on my cell phone, and the charges that showed up on my bill that month are still burned into my brain. Sometimes negative reinforcement works – I never call Fraser from my cell any more. I got a long-distance deal on calls to Canada set up on my home phone.

I park up and head for my building, turning my jacket collar up against the rain. Jerry, the homeless guy who sleeps in the doorway next to mine, sits up and yells at me, “What are you, twins?” Seems he’s gotten a jump on the day’s drinking.

My key’s in the door to my apartment when I get this prickling feeling on the back of my neck. I stop, and take a good look around the hallway. No one there. I have my hand on my gun as I open the door, and I do a walk-through of the apartment straight away. Maybe it’s paranoia, but I’d swear to God someone’s been in the apartment since I left. Nothing’s gone, and I can’t tell if anything’s been moved, but there’s just something in the air. It can’t be my Mom, because she doesn’t come round any more without calling first, not since the time she walked in on me and Vecchio fooling around on the couch.

I can’t find anything to suggest that someone’s broken in, or that anything’s wrong. I’ve been having kind of a loopy morning already, with my head in the clouds, so maybe that’s the problem. I pick up the phone and dial Fraser’s number. When I put the receiver to my ear it feels warm against my skin, and somehow that’s the most creepily inexplicable thing I’ve ever felt.

Fraser picks up on the second ring, which catches me off guard. Usually I get some Mountie who’s on desk duty and has to go call out into the wilderness for Fraser to come inside. I generally have enough time to stretch the phone cord out to its full length and snag a beer or cup of coffee, examine my cuticles, and sketch some ideas for the weekend on the pad by the phone.

“Hello, Paulatuk Detachment, Constable Fraser speaking.”

“Fraser? It’s me.”

“Ray.” He sounds surprised.

“Hey, so, how are you? You okay, haven’t been savaged by penguins or nothing?”

“No, I’m fine.” He still sounds weird. And usually he’d pick up on the penguin thing. “Is something… wrong?”

“Sorry I haven’t called you, but you know how it is. Time kinda gets away on ya.”

“Ye-es.” He says it like he’s confused. There’s a small, expectant silence.

“So anyway,” I say, “I gotta cut to the chase cause there’s a mad scientist importing depleted uranium and I should really go do something about that.”

“Uranium,” Fraser echoes.

“Yeah, but the reason I’m calling is…” I roll my head on my neck to loosen the muscles, but it doesn’t work. “Yesterday I told Vecchio I love him, but he didn’t hear me, and now I don’t know what to do.” I bump my fist against the wall. What I really want to do is punch a hole right through it, but over the years that particular vent for frustration has become less and less attractive. Bones heal slower the older they get. ****

“I see. Well, that’s very good news, Ray. Congratulations. Tell me, have you received a blow to the head?”

“What the hell kind of a thing is that to say?! What, you don’t think – ” I’m plunging into complete blind panic now. What’s happened? Has Vecchio told Fraser something? Maybe he’s planning to break up with me but he hasn’t had the guts to do it yet. Maybe Fraser knows we’re doomed, maybe –

“Ray, Ray, Ray.” Fraser’s voice breaks into my panic attack. “I don’t mean anything of the sort.” I have no idea what I’ve been saying out loud. “Please, calm down. I wasn’t referring to your feelings. I was referring to – well – tell me something, Ray, do you have any recollection of calling me?”

“I’m calling you now,” I say dumbly, which seems fair, since it’s a dumb question.

“Ah. Listen, Ray. Firstly, you know you can call me any time, for any reason, and I will endeavour to be of any help that I can. You do know that, don’t you, Ray?”

I’m nodding, and then I remember I’m on the phone, and I say, “Yeah.”

“Good. Secondly, if you told Ray how you feel but he didn’t hear you, you might want to consider telling him again.”

“I was gonna, but Dewey came in and – ”

“You told him at work?”

“Oh, like you have such a great track record at romance,” I snap back.

“Fine, fine.” No arguments there, I notice. “They do say third time’s a charm, and if you should find yourself somewhere away from forensic reports and emergency calls, things might go a little more smoothly. Now, I’m very sorry but I really do have to get back to work. These rookies won’t learn how to restring a snow shoe by themselves, you know.” He chuckles, and I wrinkle my face up.

“Sounds like a blast.”

“Yes, I know,” says Fraser. “Oh, and Ray?”

“Yeah?”

“Take care.”

“This has been a really weird phone call, Frase.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he says.

We both hang up, and I call Vecchio at the station.

“Something cool happen?” he says when he picks up.

“Not yet,” I say. “The freight company was a bust so I’m gonna head over to the university campus and do some asking around. But anyway, I was thinking, what if you come over to my place for dinner tonight?”

“Uh, sure,” he says, and his voice is really casual, the way it is when there’s people around him and he doesn’t want them to hear him being mushy. “Sounds good.”

“Okay, it’s a date.”

He laughs, which is fair enough, since we don’t do a lot of dating. Not the traditional kind, anyway. Stripping a V8 engine probably doesn’t feature in Cosmo’s list of Top Ten Romantic Dates. Fuck Cosmo, though, because it works for us.

“I’m thinking you, me, some take-out, maybe a little wine.”

“Suits me.” There’s that casual tone again. It makes me smile from ear to ear.

“Okay. Gotta go track down a mad scientist.”

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Look who’s talking.”

 

*

 

The university’s a bust, too. The Physics Department secretary tells me the professor’s sick, has been all week, and his classes are cancelled until next Monday. I ask around and it’s the same story from everyone – Filtrum hasn’t been in all week. One of his TA’s says he’s been tired and distracted recently, and her guess is cancer. The guy in the next office over says Filtrum’s been working too hard, and he isn’t surprised he’s gotten sick. I ask another professor if Filtrum ever works with depleted uranium, and she gives me a look.

“Theoretical physics,” she says. “The key word is theoretical. Phil hasn’t been in a laboratory in years.”

I’m driving back towards the station and feeling like I’ve spent the whole day chasing my tail when I decide, screw it, I’ll go to the source. We don’t have what you’d call actual evidence against Filtrum. We were tipped off by the freighter captain who says someone’s been smuggling contraband on one of his ships but swears up and down he doesn’t know who. Rumours from the crew pointed the finger at some crazy scientist guy from the university with a name like a coffee accessory. Some of the boys at the city dump had some empty cannisters and nasty headaches. And a suit from Customs had come sniffing around and hinting that the FBI and CIA would snatch this case out from under us if we didn’t hurry up and do his work for him. No big surprise that Vecchio and I hadn’t gotten any further than we had, and usually this is the kind of case I’d happily let slide to the bottom of the pile, but one way and another I’m on it now and damned if I’m gonna be outsmarted by some guy with Einstein hair. Beat me at math, sure; beat me at crime, no way.

The professor’s house is small, brick, and looks like it should have leather patches on the elbows. I scoot up the driveway, dodging puddles and getting rain down the back of my neck. When I knock at the door it’s opened by a tired-looking woman.

“Mrs Filtrum?”

Her expression changes when she sees my badge. This is the kind of neighbourhood where you only see a cop on your doorstep if something really bad has happened.

“What is it?” she asks. “Is it Phil?”

“It’s okay, Mrs Filtrum,” I reassure her. “Your husband’s fine. I just need to talk to him about something and I’m hoping you can tell me where he is.”

“He’s at work,” she says. “He has classes all day.”

“I think I should come in,” I say.

 

*

 

As far as the professor’s wife knows, her husband’s been working at the university every hour of the day and night. Since his office neighbours said he was working extra hours but not always on campus, this would point towards him having an office someplace else, but there’s nothing in his study at home that would suggest where. The professor’s desk is clean as a whistle. The bookshelves are empty. The filing cabinet echoes. He’s been here, and he’s taken away everything that’s not a pizza receipt or a bus timetable.

“He’s been very distracted, lately,” says Mrs Filtrum, standing in the study doorway and fiddling with the string of pearls around her neck. “Forgetting things, getting confused. I thought he might be getting sick.” She gives a little sigh, as if she’s trying not to cry, but I get the feeling she’s glad to tell someone about it, even a cop. “And then there’s the money.”

“Money?” My head snaps around.

“He’s been spending a lot,” she says, dropping her eyes. “I don’t usually snoop, but I was worried, and when I checked the accounts… but he said it was for work. The department wouldn’t clear any extra funding, and he said he was right on the brink of something great, something that would make his career. He’s very well-renowned in his field, you know.”

“Okay,” I say. “Uh, any chance I could take a look at your accounts or receipts or something, maybe get an idea where he’s been shopping?”

“Oh, it was nothing like that. It was withdrawals, big withdrawals, in cash. I don’t know where the money went.” She sighs again, and adds, “I’ve always trusted my husband. He’s a good man. I just… I don’t understand. He gets so caught up in his work, it’s an obsession. I was starting to worry…” She puts a hand to her mouth, and starts to cry.

 

*

 

I’ve tracked all over half the city, interviewed about a dozen people, and dealt with a crying woman. It’s a little early, but I figure I’m about ready to wind this day up. It’s Friday anyway, after a long week. Tomorrow I’ll haul the crazy professor’s ass into an interview room and finish this investigation, maybe rack up a little overtime on a Saturday, see if I can’t get this all signed, sealed and delivered by Monday, when there’s about five other open cases I should probably be dealing with. Today, though – today is done.

My mind is on my evening date with Vecchio as I park in the station lot and make my way inside. Should I try to do something special? I could cook, but then we’d probably both end up in the Emergency Room. Probably best to keep it simple. He likes the Chinese place downtown. I can make a reservation, then swing by my place to change my shirt. Because I’m just that romantic.

“Ah, Detective Kowalski.” Welsh is climbing the stairs with a detective on one side of him and a lawyer on the other. They’re both talking at once, and he looks pissed off, but he still notices me and stops. “I certainly hope you’ve got something to show for today’s endeavours.”

“Sure,” I say. He looks expectant. I guess “a date” isn’t what he’s hoping for. “I got a mad scientist on the loose in Chicago with a store of depleted uranium.”

“Another one?” Welsh gives me a glare that, if I was a cartoon character, would have turned me into a smoking pile of charcoal. He leans in close.“I have a disciplinary hearing to get to, Detective, and I sincerely hope that by tomorrow morning you have this entire mess tidied away neatly.” He pushes past me, the detective and lawyer pushing after him. “And Kowalski,” he adds over his shoulder, “I like to see a fair division of labour between partners – I do not like to see one doing all the work while the other is awol, is that clear?”

“Okay, I’ll definitely bear that in mind, sir,” I say to his back, wondering what the hell that was all about. Maybe Vecchio sneaked out to go visit Frannie and the baby, or something.

“Did you change your clothes?” says Dewey when I walk into the bullpen. “You got a date or something?” Huey’s standing behind him, tying his tie.

“So what if I do,” I say. “You two going steady, or what?”

“This is for the triplets,” says Huey.

“For who?” I say.

“Told you he’s jealous,” says Dewey. Huey’s circling around and straightening the tie. Dewey slaps his hand away, and Huey says something about gratitude, and they’re still bickering as they hustle out. It’s definitely more trouble than it’s worth to try to figure out what’s going on in their weird little world, so I let them go.

Vecchio isn’t at his desk, but his jacket’s still on the peg, so he must be around here somewhere. I throw my own jacket onto my desk and I’m heading for the break room when I hear voices in the stationery closet, and I stop dead. Two voices, both men. And one of them’s Vecchio.

I take a quick look around, and the corridor is empty, so I step up to the closet door and listen in.

“Of course I do,” says Vecchio. “Of course I love you.”

It’s like being punched in the stomach. All the air leaves my body and I buckle, my hand going to the wall by instinct to catch myself. Through the pounding in my ears I hear Vecchio’s voice saying, “Is there someone out there?” and the door handle rattles.

I turn and run, and don’t stop until I’m locked in a stall in the men’s room. I’m panting now, and shaking. Holy shit. I really do love him. Before I could’ve argued it might maybe have been lust, or just really, really liking the guy, but now I know it for sure, because this hurts like hell, hurts like it did when Stella served me with divorce papers. I wrap my arms around myself and squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the worst to pass.

It does, at last, and I dry my face with toilet paper, and come out of the stall. My reflection in the mirror looks like shit. I’m going to have to get out of here.

I look myself in the eye. Vecchio doesn’t love me. He loves someone else.

The guy in the mirror stares back at me like he doesn’t believe it.

 

*

 

“Hey, there you are, I’ve been chasing all over the building looking for you,” says Vecchio, when I come into the bullpen, and then, “Woah,” when he sees my face. He’s standing by his desk holding a steaming cup of coffee, and he puts it down and takes a limp towards me, looking concerned.

I’d say something, like “Who is he?” or “How could you do this to me, you asshole?” or even “I love you,” like I was going to say, like I’d been wanting to say all day. But my jaw’s clenched so hard I can hear my teeth creaking and I can’t even look at him. I manage to get to my desk and retrieve my jacket. The phone on my desk gives a sudden, loud ring and I jump like I’ve been tazered and instinctively grab it out of the cradle, but I still can’t relax my jaw, so I don’t say anything. It doesn’t matter, because the guy at the other end is already talking.

“Listen, get your ass out to the McLaren industrial lot, warehouse 22. Filtrum’s there and he’s got some shit going on you wouldn’t believe.” The guy’s voice is gruff and hurried, and there’s something else about it, something that’s ringing bells at the back of my mind. Do I know this guy? “Just – don’t – Just watch out, okay?” The line goes dead.

“What’s going on?” asks Vecchio.

 

So the mad scientist who’s had me running all over Chicago is in a warehouse, and he’s got some shit going on. I should get backup, I should bring Vecchio up to speed, I should put my personal life to one side and do my job.

Screw that.

“I’m gone,” I say in Vecchio’s direction. I stop in the doorway and add, without turning around, “And tonight’s off.”

“What? Hey! Kowalski!” He’s still yelling at me as I get the hell out of there.

 

*

 

Whatever else, I’m lucky Vecchio slipped on the basketball court last night and twisted his ankle, or I would’ve had him running after me. As it is, I get out of the station and out of the city and the only thing he can do is ring my cellphone over and over until I switch it off.

You’d think the drive back out to the docks would calm me down, but it doesn’t. I get there, and I’m about ready to blow my top. As I pull into the industrial lot for the second time that day, I flick my headlights on and peer through the rain at the directory board. Offices off to the right, warehouses off to the left. The Goat sends up huge sprays of water as I plough through puddles that are getting towards being ponds.

There’s a light on inside warehouse 22. There’s a car already parked outside, a little red hatchback that looks like a professor’s car, so I park across the bumper, blocking it. The door to the warehouse is unlocked, which seems strange if the professor’s in there doing something illegal, but what the hell. I draw my gun and go inside.

The warehouse is pretty much empty, except for a pile of what looks like refridgerators and old TVs, stacked up in a massive heap. There’s a desk lamp in the middle of it all, creating a glow of light over what might be a computer console from the 80s. There’s someone moving around up there, darting to and fro, flicking switches and turning dials. This is pretty much something out of the Jetsons.

I watch for a few minutes, and when I’m sure there’s just the one guy up there, I step forward until I’m at the foot of the mass of electrical junk, and I yell out. “Hey! Filtrum!”

His head pops up like a merekat over the console and he says, “Ah, fuck.”

This takes me by surprise – I never thought of scientists swearing.

“Detective Kowalski,” Filtrum calls down to me, and he’s still throwing levers and doing whatever up there. I start looking around for some kind of pathway or rope ladder or however the heck it was he got up there. “I’m sorry for your inconvenience, I really am, please believe me. But I warned you not to touch the machine, I warned you to stay back, and you wouldn’t, would you?”

“What?” I say.

“Stay back!” he yells, his voice suddenly high-pitched and frantic. “Don’t touch the machine! Get away from here!” Then his tone drops back to normal. He’s still yelling to be heard over the noise of what sounds like twelve air conditioners all revving up. “See? I told you so. Detective – ” he peers down at where I’ve got one foot on a ledge and my hands wrapped around a bar that seems to be stable. “I’m warning you not to touch the machine. It’s very dangerous, and there will be consequences you can’t even imagine.”

“Filtrum, you’re in a world of trouble,” I say, pulling myself up. It’s like climbing the wall at the gymn, but without ropes and with the possibility the wall might be radioactive. “You’ve been importing depleted uranium and smuggling God knows what else into the country. And this has been – ” I get a hand-hold and now I’m almost at the console, “this has been a bad day for me, really, it’s been off the scale, so I’m going to arrest you and take you down to the station and you’re going to write a complete confession because otherwise I won’t beat you up but I will get the tire iron from my trunk and I will smash this whatever it is to fucking pieces.”

Filtrum slaps my hand away from where I’m getting a grip on the edge of the console. He’s hardly paying attention to me, his hands flying from keyboard to keyboard. All around him there’s a nest of wires and switches and it pretty much looks like a computer threw up and then died in a fit of agony.Without looking at me, Filtrum says, “It’s set for 7am today, so it’s only about an eight hour loop. You’ll be disoriented and you’ll feel sick, and you’ll probably think you’re losing your mind, but everything will work out okay if you just make sure you don’t meet yourself, and do everything you were going to do.” He darts over and puts his hand on a big red button that’s right in front of me, and he presses it before I can stop him.

 

*

 

I wake up on the floor. It takes a while to figure this out.

I groan, long and croaky. It’s a long time since I’ve felt like this. What the hell did I drink last night? Did I do drugs? Did someone hit me in the head? I have no idea.

Some minutes pass – maybe five, maybe thirty. Bit by bit, I get to know things. I’m fully dressed, and I’m lying on a concrete floor. I’m indoors, and I’m alone. I’m a cop and my name is Ray Kowalski. Knowing those last things brings me a sense of relief, since I hadn’t realised till that moment that I’d forgotten who I was.

I push myself up till I’m sitting. My head’s spinning and I feel sick, but I can’t feel anything else wrong – no ache in my head, no broken bones, no split lip, nothing like that. I rub my eyes and look around. I’m in a warehouse; the roof’s way up above me in the darkness, and there aren’t any lights on. There’s some machinery nearby, dark and bulky in the shadows. Other than that, the place is empty.

I manage to get to my feet, and stagger to the door. It’s locked.

As I turn away from it, about to go see if there’s another way out, something flashes through my head. I’m coming in through this door; I’m closing it softly behind me; I’m creeping through the warehouse towards the machines at the far end, and holy shit. That’s right. Filtrum. The flash of white light.

I rub a hand over my face. Whatever the guy did to me, it knocked me out for at least a few hours; the light from the dirty windows high up in the walls is dim, like late evening. I pat myself down. Everything’s still there: gun, badge, wallet, keys, phone, although the phone’s crackling and won’t connect so I can’t call for help. I guess I could try to shoot the lock off the door, but in my experience that’s usually more trouble than it’s worth. I skirt the walls, and find what I was looking for: a roller door with a bay for a forklift or a truck. There was a lock, but it’s broken, so I roll the door up and step outside.

I can hear gulls screaming nearby, and there’s a freshness in the air that tells me I’m near the lake. The sky’s a dull grey and the sun’s just up. I must’ve spent the whole night locked in that warehouse.

My car isn’t there.

Mother _fucker_.

Bad enough I get knocked out and locked up, now someone’s hotwired my car. I stand there where I’d parked and I yell some obscenities, but it doesn’t make any difference to the whereabouts of the GTO.

It takes me about half an hour to find my way to the gate, and there’s a payphone on the corner. I feed in some quarters and ring Vecchio, checking my watch. Half past eight. He’ll be at the station, unless he’s out looking for me. Given the way I stormed out of the station yesterday, chances are good he’s left me a couple of pissed-off voicemail messages, and then given me some time and space to cool off over night. He probably doesn’t even know I never got home. My stomach turns when I remember what I overheard in the stationery closet. But Vecchio’s my partner and I need backup. I could call someone else… but I trust Vecchio. With policework, I trust him. ****

No answer. I hang up and ring back. Still no answer. Again, I hang up and ring back, and this time it’s about to go to voice mail when Vecchio picks up.

“Vecchio! Vecchio, it’s me.”

“What?” The line’s crackling and breaking up – I can hardly hear him. I shout down the phone that I’m at the docks, that Filtrum knocked me out and locked me in a warehouse, and Vecchio’d better get his ass down here and pick me up.

“The docks?” I hear him repeat.

“Yeah, the docks!” I say the address over a couple of times. Then the line cuts out. I consider calling back, but I’m pretty sure he got it. There should be a squad car here in minutes. We’ve got Filtrum on assaulting a police officer now, and I want to get everything in his warehouse bagged and tagged as quickly as possible.

It takes almost an hour before someone shows up. That’s time I spend hanging out at the gate, and then walking back to the warehouse to check that nothing’s happening, and trying to call Vecchio again and leaving increasingly pissed off voicemail messages when he doesn’t pick up, so I’m cursing his inability to learn how to use a damned smartphone, and I’m trying to call the station but I can’t get through. I consider trecking over to the freighter company and asking to use their phone, but in the end I just wait. I’m sitting on the ground with my back against the wall just inside the gate when a car pulls in, and I notice two things at exactly the same time.

The first thing is that it’s starting to rain, and the ground I’ve been sitting on is bone dry. I guess maybe that was a fact that’d been at the back of my mind, waiting to catch my attention, since I stumbled out of the warehouse. It rained all day yesterday – I’d driven through puddles the size of paddling pools when I got here yesterday afternoon. But there aren’t any puddles now, just the sheen of water droplets from the first gusts of drizzle.

The second thing is that the car that just drove through the gates is my GTO. And I’m driving it.

I jump to my feet as the car pulls in, but I’m not in the driver’s line of sight. I can clearly see him though. I can see his hair, and part of his face, and his hands on the wheel, and the grey jacket he’s wearing, and he’s me. I’m peering over the top of the wheel, trying to read the directory board to my left, while I’m standing away to my right and staring at myself as I drive past.

 

*

 

I flag down the first cab I see by standing in the road and holding up my badge. The guy behind the wheel takes it in stride when I shove money at him and tell him to step on it. He tries a little conversation but I ignore him, so he cranks up his stereo and drives hell for leather back into the city.

I could go to the hospital and check myself in, but even when you’re pretty sure you’re going nuts there’s still a strong urge not to let someone wrap you up in that big white jacket with the long sleeves. I could go to the 2-7, but I can’t see how that would help my mental state. I don’t have much to hang on to right now, and so I’m following my instincts, which are telling me to go home. This is partly because I am soaked to the skin. I need a change of clothes. I also need food and coffee and a chance to get my head straight.

As I pay the cab driver I ask him the date, and he tells me it’s Friday the twelfth – yesterday’s date.

The homeless guy who hangs out in the doorway next to mine calls out, “Hey Detective, home again already?” I stop with my hand on my front door.

“Hey Jerry,” I call back. “What did you see me last?”

“Couple hours ago when you left for work,” he says cheerfully. “What happened to your car?”

“Fuck my life,” I say, and I’ve never meant it before like I mean it now.

“Tell me about it,” says Jerry.

 

*

 

I let myself into my apartment and strip out of everything I’m wearing – boots, socks, jeans, underpants, jacket, shirt, tshirt. I gather up everything but the boots and take the soggy armful into the bathroom and dump it in the laundry basket. Then I think twice and empty my pockets. That’s Vecchio house-training me – he seems to end up doing a lot of laundry when he stays over. That and dishes. He doesn’t exactly complain about it; I think it makes him feel at home. And I’m not complaining either, since I hate doing laundry. But he’s getting me into the habit of taking money and credit cards and keys out of my pockets instead of sending them through a wash and rinse cycle and coming out the other end as something he can yell at me for.

I grab a towel and dry myself off, then walk naked across the hall to my bedroom. My clothes seem to find their way into the wardrobe and drawers more often these days, too. I pull on my clothes and make a mental note to thank Vecchio more often for stuff like that. I don’t even have to do the sniff-test to know what’s clean and what’s not. Then I remember that we’re going to break up, and I distract myself by wondering how pathetic it would be, on a scale of one to ten, to cry over clean laundry.

I’m tugging on a pair of dry boots as I dial the phone.

Fraser once told me about this thing called Occam’s Razor, where you look at all the evidence and decide that the simplest answer is probably the truth. Even if the truth is something ridiculous, it’s hard to ignore when you’ve just recently seen another version of yourself doing something you remember already doing.

“Hey, Constable whoever,” I snap, as soon as the desk jockey at the other end of the line picks up the phone. “Don’t ask questions, just go get Fraser. Do it now, do it quick. This is an emergency.”

At the other end of the line, an old-fashioned receiver is sitting on a Mountie’s desk, picking up static and background noises while whoever answered goes to get Fraser. At my end of the line, it feels like I’m waiting forever.

“Ray?” says Fraser’s voice in my ear. I guess he knows any American guy calling him with an emergency is going to be called Ray.

“Frase!” I hold the phone so close against my ear that it’s hurting, and with my free fist I’m bumping myself on the forehead. “Fraser, the freakiest thing in the world has happened to me, and I need your help.”

“Of course,” says Fraser. “What can I do?”

God, I love it when he cuts to the chase. I guess he can tell from my voice that this is serious.

“Okay,” I say, “Okay, here it is. I was looking for this guy, this professor, that me and Vecchio want for illegal importing, right, and I track him down to this warehouse where there’s this big massive thing, like something off the SciFi channel, you know?” I don’t stop to let him remind me that they don’t get cable up at the outpost, I just barrel on. “So I’m about to grab him out of his little pod thing in the middle of this machine, and he hits a switch, and I wake up on the floor of the warehouse and it’s 7 o’clock this morning. I mean, this morning. Again. I’ve already done this morning. Fraser.” I gulp. “I travelled in time.”

There’s a silence in the phone, and I wonder if he’s doing semaphore to the other Mounties. “Send help,” I imagine him signalling – “Psychiatric emergency response Mounties, fall in!”

“Well, Ray,” says Fraser at last. “That sounds, at the very least, highly improbable. Are you sure you haven’t ingested some form of hallucinogenic material, or perhaps – ”

“Fraser, please. Maybe I’m going nuts, and if I am I promise I’ll send you a real nice postcard from the psych ward, but just in case, just in case this is like that time you pretended to be dead or we had that voodoo curse or whathaveyou, can you please pretend this might be true? And help me? You said you’d help me if I asked.”

I can hear Fraser’s frown down the phone line, crackling with distance and confusion.

“All right,” he says eventually. “In the unlikely event of your having,” I hear him lower his voice, “travelled in time – ” and then I hear the sounds of distant Mounties laughing their asses off, and I truly hope he makes them skin wolverines all day as a punishment. Fraser clears his throat, and the laughter stops, and I get the feeling that the others are leaving because his voice changes, becomes more relaxed. “There are generally two rules of time travel,” he says, as if they did a class on time travel in Mountie school one Monday afternoon, and he’s never had a reason to remember it till now, but the information’s still there, just in case he ever needed it. “Firstly, you should make every effort not to influence the future. The traditional example is accidentally killing your grandfather, but it would appear that your own personal time loop isn’t quite that extended. I would simply recommend that you try not to do anything that will influence a future which has, in fact, already happened, because you’ve seen it, and if you changed that, there might be catastrophic consequences to causality. Do you follow me, Ray?”

“Sure,” I mutter, “don’t kill anyone. Gotcha. What else?”

“It is imperative,” and now I can hear him leaning forward, “that you do not allow your present self and your past/future self to meet.”

I swear, I can hear him pronounce the either/or slash between past and future. I never knew anyone else who could pronounce punctuation. I guess I’m a little distracted, what with my head spinning with all this time travel stuff and the ultimate weirdness of my life, because that’s what I’m fixating on, but I can hear Fraser repeating himself.

“Do you understand, Ray? If both versions of you were to meet, it could have catastrophic repercussions for the time-space continuum.” Again, with audible hyphens. But now his meaning is starting to seep through, and my eyes go wide.

“Oh, shit,” I say. “Frase, I gotta go.”

“Ray, I think —” but I don’t let him finish.

“I gotta go. I’m about to call you from this phone, which means I could walk in at any second. Thanks.” I hang up, grab my coat, and I’m out of the apartment in double-quick time. I can hear someone coming up the stairs, so I spin round and run up to the next floor, taking two steps at a time. Then I stand on the landing and try to breathe without making a sound. I hear keys getting pulled out, and a door opening and closing.

Okay, catastrophe averted. I’ve got four or five minutes while my earlier self calls Fraser and wonders what the fuck is wrong with him. So I’ve got time to get out of there without seeing myself.

As I exit the building, I wonder if it would cause a catastrophic time-space whatever if I took my own car. I’ve got the keys in my pocket, and there she is, all shiny and inviting under the rain. But I drove her out to the university after I called Fraser, so I guess I can’t take off with her now. Considering that nobody on campus had any idea about Filtrum, it’s a pity. I consider leaving a note for myself to save myself the wasted trip.

Looking back, it seems obvious, but when you’ve just been thrown through a vortex into the past, things aren’t so clear. The phone call that had made Dewey poke his head into the break room and call Vecchio back to the bullpen, the phone call that had sent me off on a wild goose chase, that was me calling from the payphone after I woke up in Filtrum’s warehouse. I slap my palm against my forehead. Dammit, if I hadn’t panicked and tried to call Vecchio I wouldn’t have tracked all the way out to the docks for no good reason.

The truth is that I didn’t really believe the time travel thing until I said it to Fraser. I mean, would you? But it’s the only thing I can come up with that makes sense, and after hearing my past self in my apartment doing exactly what I remember doing, and after checking newspapers on the three stands between my apartment and the deli, and after asking the girl at the counter at the deli what day it is, I’m kind of convinced. Why the universe didn’t explode when I saw my old self drive past down by the docks, I don’t know. Maybe because my other self didn’t see me at the same time. Why this happened at all, I don’t know. Maybe because I did something horrible in a previous life. What I should do about it, I do know. Find the crazy professor and make him make it not have happened.

So I’m chewing on a deli sandwich and riding a cab to Filtrum’s house. I know he’s not there by the time my earlier self drops by mid-afternoon, but maybe he came back in the morning. Will come back. Will be going to have come back. Maybe he needs dry socks, too.

I check my watch about five hundred times on the way. What I could really use right now is a timetable so I can keep track of what my earlier self is doing, but I’m not exactly a great time keeper usually.

I get the cab to pull up down the block, and make my way to the professor’s house by way of a neighbour’s yard. I figure Filtrum’s going to be on the lookout for me, so I’m surprised when I see the back door’s hanging open. As I sneak inside, I hear noises from upstairs, and I make my way straight to the professor’s study.

He’s bent over with his back to me, stuffing papers from his desk drawer into boxes that weren’t there last time I was here – that wouldn’t be going to have been there when my earlier self drops by in a couple of hours.

“You,” I say. “Hey. You’re under arrest.”

He looks up at me and frowns, as if he was expecting to see someone else. He looks at his watch. The office looks like a tornado hit it. Papers and books everywhere, boxes, files, some kind of gas cannister in the corner, other stuff that I don’t even know what it is. Later today it’ll be empty.

“Stop that,” I say. “You’re disturbing evidence. And I’m just going to say it one more time – I’m arresting you.”

“For what?” Filtrum stops emptying his desk and glares at me with annoyance, like I see from pretty much all middle-class guys I arrest for whatever reason: how dare I?

“Illegal importation of a restricted substance,” I answer. “And assaulting a police officer with a time machine.”

“That was an accident.”

“Oh, so if you accidentally ran me over with your car you don’t think I’d still kick your ass to the full extent of the law?”

“I tried to warn you,” he says. “You should never have come within the fall-out zone.” He grabs a notebook and waves it in the air before shoving it into a box. “Ideally the whole machine would be encased in a lead-plutonium alloy shell to ensure no overflow of the rays. Unfortunately it’s impossible to get the materials – believe me, I’ve tried – and as a result there’s a ten-metre overflow area of displaced time. I told you to get back, but you wouldn’t.”

“Tell it to the judge,” I say. He gives me a look. “Don’t look like that,” I snap, “I’ve been in courtrooms with crazier stories than this, believe me.” I fish my cuffs out of my pocket and move over to slap them on him, but he darts away. I stop and consider drawing my gun. I really don’t want to chase this guy around the room. “You’re being stupid,” I say. “Come on, let’s do this the easy way.”

“You can’t do this,” says Filtrum, “You have to let me go – I have to get back to the machine by 5pm so that we can complete the loop. If I don’t, it’ll create a paradox. Do you know how bad that is? Did you ever hear the saying, ‘nature abhors a vaccuum’?”

“Vecchio does the housework,” I say. He ignores this.

“Nature abhors time travel paradoxes even more.” He’s edging around the pile of filing boxes, and I’m tracking him around the room, trying to keep between him and the door.

“Seems like that’s something that might have stopped you getting into the time travel business.”

“This wasn’t _supposed_ to happen!” Filtrum yells. Seems I touched a nerve, there. “I had it all planned out, and then it went wrong, and every time I put it right it just went wrong again! No matter what I do, it keeps going wrong!” He’s running his hands through his hair and moving in small, distressed circles. Seems like the guy’s really on the edge, here. “I really thought I’d got it all figured out this time,” he’s saying. “This time I had everything in place, and then you came along and screwed it all up again! Now I’ve got a cop in a time loop and oh my God, I’m going to jail, and my wife’s going to find out again, and Tilley will get my parking space on campus and I’ve made the biggest ever breakthrough in quantum physics and I can’t even claim the patent!”

I hold up my hand like a traffic cop stopping an eighteen-wheeler. “Woah. Hold on. Back it up. How many times have you done this, exactly?”

He stops in mid-frenzy and I can see the cogs whirring in his brain.

“I don’t know,” he says at last.

“Christ,” I say, and that seems to sum everything up.

Filtrum flicks out a hand and swats at a tower of boxes, which collapse, sending paper and folders and shit sliding in an avalanche between us. I lunge towards him, and slip on the papers, and scramble up, and by the time I get across the room he’s already got the window open and he’s out. I look out and see there’s a trelise that runs up the wall, and he’s already halfway down it. He looks up at me, then jumps the last three feet to the lawn, and that’s when Vecchio comes round the corner.

I’ve got one leg over the window sill and I’m just lucky I don’t topple out. Vecchio’s spotted Filtrum, who spots him right back, turns and rabbits. Vecchio runs after him, coat billowing. It’s still raining, and the grass must be slick, because Filtrum’s leg shoots from under him and Vecchio’s on him in a flash. I can hear Vecchio mirandising him, and despite Filtrum wriggling and thrashing around he’s cuffed within a minute. Vecchio heaves Filtrum to his feet.

“What time is it?” Filtrum asks, and I hear Vecchio reply,

“Too late.”

 

*

 

I’m sitting in the professor’s kitchen, drinking his coffe, trying to figure my next move. Vecchio didn’t see me – I shut the window and lurked upstairs while he locked Filtrum’s house and led him away to the Riv. Maybe Filtrum told him there was a time-travelling cop upstairs, but if he did, Vecchio ignored him.

I’m trying to convince myself that the reason I didn’t yell out, or go downstairs, or otherwise let Vecchio know I was there the whole time is that I didn’t want to create a paradox and destroy the universe. Which is true. Technically. But I’m also wondering what the hell is going on because Vecchio’s meant to be stuck at a desk with a twisted ankle, but he managed to run after Filtrum and he’s not carrying a cane. Also, what the hell is he doing here by himself? Why didn’t he bring me with him? Or maybe he did – maybe there’s another me out there in the Riv; although I don’t remember that happening the first time around.

Maybe Vecchio was faking the ankle. I can’t imagine why. Maybe he’s out arresting our suspect without me because he’s already asked Welsh to break up our partnership. Maybe he’s an asshole who’s in love with somebody else so I should ignore the feeling I got like a knife in my gut when I saw him again. Which is definitely not the reason I’m hiding like a little girl.  Just like I’m not starting to ger crazy paranoid. No sir, not me.

It’s unfortunate that my broken heart keeps interfering, because the other thing that’s on my mind is what Filtrum said about having to get back to the machine by 5pm to complete the loop. I’m also wondering what Vecchio’s going to charge Filtrum with – he doesn’t know about the time travel, obviously, and I’ve been hoping to nail Filtrum’s ass for this, which may be difficult.

I carry my coffee upstairs and look at the professor’s study. I’m pretty sure there’s evidence in here that could convict him for the smuggling at least, and maybe fucking with the time-space continuum too. I just don’t know which bits of paper are the incriminatory ones. I sift through the mess on the floor, and find one notebook that’s got my footprint on the cover, and has something that looks like Russian inside.

In the end, I take all of it. I find a spare set of keys on a hook by the front door, and unlock the door and the little red hatchback that’s parked in the driveway. Then I carry everything from the study down to the car. I mean, everything. Every last slip of paper, every folder, every notebook, even the thing that looks like a tiny refridgerator. I’m hurrying because I don’t know what time Mrs Filtrum gets back, and I really don’t want to run into her, seeing as we meet for the first time in about an hour and a half. But there’s still no sign of her by the time the study is empty and I’m ready to go.

I get the urge to leave myself a note in the desk – “Dear Kowalski, you’re fucked, but good luck.” But then, I didn’t find a note, so I must not have left a note, so I don’t leave a note. I’m getting the hang of the paradox thing, I think as I lock the front door behind me.

 

*

 

“Paulatuk Detachment, hello Ray.”

“How many times have I called you today, Frase?”

I hear a creak and a clunk. In my mind’s eye I can see him leaning back in his ricketty old wooden desk chair, resting his heels on the corner of his desk.

“Twice by my reckoning, Ray. How’s your day going?”

There’s an odd tone to his voice.

“Frase, are you okay? You sound… chipper.”

“It’s turning out to be a remarkably entertaining day. You and Ray should really come up to visit again sometime soon. In fact, we’re celebrating Robert William Service day in three weeks’ time, perhaps you could come up then?”

“Uh, I don’t think that’s gonna happen, Frase.” I tuck the phone between my ear and my shoulder, and wrap both arms around myself. What I really want is to curl up in a ball on the floor, but the phone cord won’t stretch that far. “Me and Vecchio – we’re breaking up.”

“No, I can hear you quite clearly.”

“I mean we’re breaking _up_ , Fraser. As in, no longer a couple. He’s – he’s – he’s – he’s – ”

“Ray, Ray, Ray.”

I swallow, and we stop chiming like a couple of weird bells.

“I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding,” says Fraser, and his voice is low and warm, reassuring. “All you need to do is sit down and talk together.”

“I can’t,” I say.

“Of course you can. Just this morning you were telling me how much you love him.”

“He doesn’t love me,” I whisper. “He’s in love with somebody else. I heard him say so.”

Fraser clears his throat, and when he speaks again he’s picking his words carefully. “I can understand your distress,” he says, “but even if you’re right, you owe it to Ray to speak to him about it all. Besides, you can’t avoid him forever. For a start, you would be neglecting your duties as an officer of the law.”

That’s true. Actually, that’s why I called. With an effort, I unwrap my arms.

“Now,” Fraser sounds businesslike. In fact, he sounds like he’s practically rubbing his hands together. “How’s the time travel? You haven’t destroyed the universe yet, so it must be going quite well.”

“I tried to catch the crazy professor, but Vecchio caught him instead, and now he’s locked up at the precinct and if I don’t get him out by 5pm the world will end.”

“Hmmm… Anything else?”

“I got a car full of evidence parked outside my apartment but I don’t remember us having a carful of evidence, so I don’t know what I did with it – what I’m going to do with it. Also, Vecchio used to have a twisted ankle, and now he doesn’t.”

“Did you check the evidence log first time around?”

“No.”

“Then it’s possible that the evidence was all logged and stored properly, but you just didn’t happen to see it.” I bet he’s sitting there ticking my problems off on his fingers. “Twisted ankles can heal after a day or two.”

“He was walking with a cane this morning.”

“Indeed. Well, that’s another item for the agenda when you meet with Ray. As for the professor being in custody, I take it you’re bearing in mind the fact that he was at liberty to operate the time machine the first time you stumbled upon it, and therefore needs to be at liberty again later today in order to do so again, thus avoiding a time paradox?”

“That’s what I was bearing in mind, yes.”

“Good. Quite an exercise in logic, isn’t it?”

“I’m not reading that book, Fraser, I don’t care what you say.” Last time he visited, Fraser’s bedtime reading had been something geeky philosophy majors would have to study. He’d tried to get me and Vecchio interested, but all that happened was we ended up sending him home with some Classic Car magazines, and he’d left _Logic Like You Like It_ , or whatever it was called, on my coffee table. It’d got a pizza grease stain on the cover, so Vecchio put it on the sideboard, where it’s been gathering dust ever since.

“If you did a little study you would find yourself better prepared for situations like this.”

“Christ, yes, what was I thinking. This weekend I’ll brush up on my zoology too, just in case the dinosaurs come back or something. You never know, right?”

“Calm down, Ray.”

I say some swearwords, and Fraser warns me that I’m on an official phone line to the RCMP and should watch my language, and I say some swearwords in French that he taught us on the fishing trip last year, and Fraser laughs, because he always laughs at my French accent.

“Bail him out,” is Fraser’s advice on the professor.

“Bail out a suspect? A suspect my partner arrested?”

“Certainly. I once had to prevail upon Ray to bail _me_ out.”

“I know. He says people still laugh at him for that.”

“Better to have people laugh at you than to destroy the universe as we know it.”

“I guess so.” I look at my watch. It’s becoming a compulsion; I do it every five minutes. “I’m just finishing up at the university now,” I say. “Then I’ll head over to the professor’s house, and then I go back to the station. So I gotta get all that stuff logged into evidence and bail out Filtrum before I get to the station.”

“I’d say you have a reasonable window in which to achieve those goals,” says Fraser smoothly. He’s following all this without any problem.

“You know what I can’t figure out?” Apart from everything. “How come there’s only one of him? There’s one Filtrum, but there’s two me’s. Two of me.”

“I presume the professor foresaw the potential for calamity if the time machine allowed duplication of the subject, and built in some sort of containment field – so that he’s contained in his own time stream, whereas your stream’s been duplicated, perhaps because you weren’t actually inside the machine when it was activated. That’s what happens when you interfere with a scientific experiment – things start to spin out of control.”

“You got this all figured out, huh, Frase?”

“Well, I’ve had some time to think about it. And I have the advantage of being out of the loop, as it were, which gives me a certain clarity.”

“I wish you were here,” I say.

“I can imagine that my presence would only make the situation more complicated,” chuckles Fraser. “But I wish I was there, too. I have some leave I can take after this rotation of recruits has moved on. I could come down and visit. I’d like to see you both, and my godson, too. How are Francesca and Bobby?”

“Good. We think she’s pregnant again, but she’s not saying. He cut his own hair at daycare the other day, it’s hilarious. I’ll send you a photo.”

“I would like that. I should go now, I’m expecting another call.”

“Is it from me?”

“Of course not,” he laughs. “Take care, Ray. Good luck not ending the world. I’m sure everything will work out just fine.”

 

*

 

I park the professor’s car in a corner of the lot, and sneak into the 27th precinct. It’s pretty busy in there, but I find a civilian aide to help me haul all the crap from the car into the evidence locker.

“Hot date?” she asks me as we’re loading loose papers into cardboard boxes and I’m trying to remember where they keep the tags. I shoot her a baffled look, and she says, “That’s about the hundredth time you’ve looked at your watch. I can take care of this, if you’ve got someplace else to be.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I have… about a half hour, and then I have to scoot.”

I spend the half hour labelling evidence and planning my next move. I gotta get to the cells without Vecchio seeing me. Fraser’s right, I can’t avoid the guy forever, but I can sure as hell avoid him for the rest of today. Tomorrow, when there’s just one of me, I can get back to dealing with my broken heart and deciding whether or not to slash Vecchio’s tires or find out who the other guy is and slash his tires instead. Or as well as.

“Don’t you have to get going?” says the aide, and I jerk out of my unhappy daydream.

It’s possible that Vecchio’s spent the afternoon interviewing Filtrum. I’m guessing that’s what he’s been doing, since that’s what I would’ve done. I would’ve called my partner to say I’d caught our suspect and why didn’t he ditch the university staff and the professor’s wife and come on down to the station to take part in a little one-two-punch interrogation, but Vecchio didn’t do that – didn’t have done that – it didn’t happen first time around. Presumably for the same reason that he didn’t tell me that his ankle wasn’t so bad after all. The lying, cheating asshole.

I miss him. I’ve spent one crazy day without him, and he’s ripped my heart right out of my chest because he’s a lying prick who’s in love with somebody else,but I miss him.

 _I am in serious trouble, here,_ I think to myself as I’m sidling round corners and sneaking along hallways, keeping my eyes and ears tuned for the sound of Italian leather shoes on the linoleum or that Italian-American voice at full volume.

“Detective Vecchio just signed him in,” the duty sergeant says.

“Well, I’m signing him out. How much is bail?”

I guess I’m lucky it’s getting towards the end of a Friday afternoon and there aren’t dozens of people around to watch me hand over my credit card and post bail for a mad scientist. The duty sergeant shakes his head and I know that every man and his dog will know about this within ten minutes.

Filtrum looks even more the worse for wear than he did earlier, if that’s possible.

“Ah, Detective. Cutting it a little close, aren’t we?”

“Shut up,” I snap, grabbing his elbow and starting to lead him towards the back door. We’re about to round a corner when I hear a voice – Vecchio.

“Anyone know where my no-good partner is?”

“I saw him in evidence a little while ago,” says someone else, and I recognise the civilian aide’s voice. “I think he left after he was done there.” I hear Vecchio grousing, and the tap, tap of the cane. He’s coming towards us.

I haul Filtrum back the way we came, and round a couple more corners.

“What is going on?” Filtrum demands. “Detective, we really don’t have time to waste.”

“Do not talk to me about time,” I say. “Hey, you.” The uniform cop passing by gives me an unimpressed look. I hand Filtrum over and instruct the cop to handcuff the professor to the doorhandle in the passenger seat of the little red hatchback parked outside the back door, and hand over the keys to the car. “Leave them in the back seat, leave the doors unlocked,” I say. “I’ll just be a minute. Oh, and if you get stopped by Detective Vecchio, tell him – tell him – tell him something. Tell him Detective Kowalski told you to do it.”

“You are Detective Kowalski, right?” says the uniform cop. “And you are telling me to do this, right?”

“Don’t get smart with me, buddy, it’s been a bad day. Now go, go, no time to lose.” I wave them away, and peel off in the opposite direction. Vecchio’s looking for me, but he can’t have every exit covered. I’m heading for the front door, intending to circle round the building and back to the car, when I turn a corner and run into Huey and Dewey. They’re going towards the bullpen, arguing about something.

“Oh, here he is,” says Huey when he sees me. “Long time, no see. What have you been doing, Kowalski, tracking down more little old professors dressed in tweed?”

“Yeah, he sure looked like a danger to society,” chimes in Dewey.

“What’s next, arresting little old grandmas in knitted cardigans?” asks Huey.

“Shut up.”

“Is he jealous?” Huey says to Dewey.

“He sure seems jealous,” Dewey says to Huey. “I guess he heard that our suspects are three twenty-year-old blonde Norwegian triplets.”

“Don’t say three,” says Huey. “There’s always three triplets, you don’t need to say three.”

“Where’s Vecchio?” I say.

“Looking for you,” says Dewey as they go past me. I go on towards the front door, but then I hear Dewey’s voice again back down the corridor, saying, “He’s right here – hey, Kowalski!” I look over my shoulder and Dewey’s holding the bullpen door open, and I bet a million bucks Vecchio’s about to step through it. I duck around the corner, and grab the nearest door, and slide through.

It’s the stationery closet. I reach up to pull on the light cord, when a voice next to my ear says, “Don’t. I’ll see the light on.”

I almost swallow my tongue. It’s Vecchio.

 

*

 

“How did you do that?” I squeak. It’s pitch black in the closet, but I feel Vecchio move up and push past me. He lifts my hand off the door handle and I realise I could have just opened the door and left – it must have been someone else in the bullpen looking for me. At the moment, though, I hear a cane tap-tapping along the floor outside, and Vecchio muttering to himself,

“Sure, leave me here to do all the work, no phone call, no explanation, no good explanation anyway, I swear if he wasn’t so pretty…” and then his voice fades.

“Did you figure it out yet?” Vecchio’s smiling, I can hear it. As my eyes adjust to the dark I can see the shape of him right next to me. I edge away. “You don’t have a lot of time, so I’m gonna be really quick about this. You have to go tell me all about it. Everything. All the time travel stuff, everything about Filtrum and the machine, and having the day twice over. Every detail. You got that? It’s the only way I’ll know what to do.”

“Vecchio,” I say. I’m running my hands through my hair. I may have just had a minor stroke.

“You’re going to tell me everything, and I’m going to have a hard time believing it,” he says, “but you’ll tell me anyway and you’ll take me out to the docks with you and the professor. You’ll tell me not to get into the machine with you. That’s important, okay? Tell me to just keep back in the shadows where you can’t see me. Kowalski? Are you getting all of this?”

“Vecchio,” I say again, because I’m an idiot. I’m the biggest, stupidest, dumbest fuck in the world. “Vecchio, I love you. I’m totally in love with you. Are you in love with me?”

“What?” I guess the change of topic threw him.

“You have to tell me, Vecchio. I told you the other night, but you didn’t hear me, and it’s been driving me crazy all day long. Like, really crazy. I need to hear you say it.”

Vecchio steps towards me at the same time as I step towards him, and he reaches out and puts one hand on my neck, and the other on my hip, and he leans in real close.

“Of course I do,” says Vecchio. “Of course I love you.”

I kiss him. It’s dark and I kind of miss and our noses bump and it’s no way the smoothest kiss in the world, but God, it’s great.

There’s a muffled noise outside in the corridor, and Vecchio turns and says, “Is there someone out there?” and puts out a hand on the door handle, but I pull him back towards me.

“It’s just the other me,” I say.

“Oh,” he says, and then, “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“Not your fault,” I say. He wraps his arms around me and I feel safe for the first time in far too long, because these last two days have been the longest day ever **.** “What have you been doing?” I say. “If you’re doing this day again, what were you doing?”

“I lay low,” says Vecchio. “Seemed to me like the thing you did wrong was panic.”

“Hey, I didn’t get advanced warning,” I say into his shoulder.

“That’s true. I did get a primer on time travel from you in the car on the way to the docks.”

“Your ankle,” I say.

“It feels a lot better today. This time round today. Probably shouldn’t have run on it, but you do what you gotta do to catch the perp.”

“Did you call Fraser?” I ask, pulling back far enough to peer at his face in the dark.

“Of course,” he says. “That was the smartest thing you did. You should’ve heard him. It took me a half hour to convince him we weren’t playing a prank or on drugs.” So that’s why Fraser sounded so on board with the time travel idea when I rang him the last time. And he was expecting a call – probably Vecchio calling him again after arresting Filtrum.

“Did he try to make you read the logic book?”

“Yeah. I’ll tell you all about it sometime when you don’t have to run off and stop the world getting blown up by a time machine. We could have that date,” says Vecchio, and the smile’s back in his voice.

“That sounds good. Saving the space-time continuum also sounds good. We should go do that.”

“Hold on.” We fall silent as the tapping of a cane goes by again. “Okay. I went to get coffee, then I went back to the bullpen, then the other you came in. Should be all clear for a minute.”

“You have to come out to the time machine too, right?” I say, holding his hand as I carefully open the door. Right now I’m stumbling into the men’s room while my world falls apart. Poor me, I think to myself, and I squeeze Vecchio’s hand. The relief flooding through me is like nothing on earth.

“I know what to do,” Vecchio says as we emerge from the closet. “I’ll be at the warehouse when you get there. But I can’t see myself, obviously. My current self has to stay outside the containment zone so he can be sent back and become me, now. Jeeze, I’m gonna be pleased when today is over, it’s been making my head ache worse than tenth-grade math.” He looks down, and I look down, and we’re still holding hands.

“I don’t want to let go,” I say.

“We have to,” says Vecchio. “But not for long. Besides, aren’t you forgetting something? You have a phone call to make.”

Second stroke in three minutes. Holy shit. The phone call. The voice that sounded half familiar, the tip and the warning and I’ve got to find a phone. How long was I in the men’s room, trying to pull myself together? It felt like eternity. That’s not the most useful time measurement though. But Vecchio was standing by his desk with a cup of coffee when I came in from the bathroom, so I’ve got maybe thirty seconds to phone myself. I catapault down the hallway and around corners until I reach the front desk, and lunge across it. I grab the phone and call my own extension. The desk officer, who’d jumped out of my way, stands with her hands on her hips, shaking her head and pursing her lips as I hang across her desk.

The other end of the line picks up, and I start talking. “Listen, get your ass out to the McLaren industrial lot, warehouse 22. Filtrum’s there and he’s got some shit going on you wouldn’t believe.” The duty officer is bending down now, trying to catch my attention while she mimes, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Just – don’t – Just watch out, okay?” I hang up. “Poor asshole,” I say as I clamber off the desk.

“You or him?” snaps the duty officer sarcastically, retrieving her phone.

“Both.”

I give it a minute before going back to the bullpen. Right now I’m running out of the station and throwing myself into the Goat and burning rubber away from Vecchio and towards one hell of a headache. The coast is clear for me to go get Vecchio and do as he told me to do, which is tell him everything.

Vecchio limps round a corner at speed and almost bangs right into me. He stares at me with wide eyes and says, “Kowalski, did you change your clothes? What in the holy _fuck_ is going on?”

I grin at him.

“Come with me,” I say, “and I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”

 

*

 

“But you can’t get in the time machine with us,” I say. I’m gunning it over the bridge in the professor’s car. Filtrum’s in the back seat, telling me to hurry up. He tried to stop me explaining everything to Vecchio, but I told him that, A, the future-time Vecchio told me I was going to tell him everything so I had to or there would be a paradox, and, Two, butt the hell out because this was, at the end of the day, all his fault, so he shut up.

 

“Why not?” Vecchio sounds both confused and pissed off.

“Fraser said something about a containment field. That’s why there’s only one professor, even though he’s been riding round in time like it’s a merry-go-round, which, I wish there was a law against that because it seems like there should be.”

“There’s nothing I hate more than an irresponsible egg-head,” says Vecchio. Seems he and the professor didn’t make friends during their interview this afternoon.

“I’m a pioneer,” says Filtrum.

“Oh, please,” snaps Vecchio. “Who do you think you are, Sam Beckett?”

“Who?”

“Jeeze, it’s like you didn’t do any research for this at all.” Vecchio lowers his voice a little and says to me, “Can we trust this guy?”

I shrug a shoulder. “I think it’s gonna be okay,” I say, because I’m thinking ahead and guessing that even at his most frantic, Filtrum isn’t gonna try anything dumb with two armed and pissed-off cops hidden in his time machine with him, and two other versions of those cops coming at him from different directions. Besides, from what he said at his house earlier it seems like he’s as keen as us to have this damned loop over and done with.

“Why can’t we just shut the machine off?” asks Vecchio.

“We have to complete the loop,” says Filtrum, leaning into the space between the front seats. “We have to step into the machine again at the end of today’s loop. I’ll set the machine for final run, and once we’ve sent our former selves back in time, we’ll both still be there afterwards. You have to be in the containment chamber with me,” he says to me, “or your current self will snap out of existence the moment the machine finishes the run, and –” He breaks off, then concludes, “I don’t know what would happen then. Probably best we don’t find out.”

“But if there’s another me out there,” says Vecchio, and he does not sound as if he believes it, “what about him?”

“He’ll already be there,” I say. “You know what to do. You can’t see him, though, or the world will end.”

“Oh, that’s convenient,” says Vecchio testily. I reach over and grab his hand.

“I get it,” I say. “Just trust me. Just for a little while longer.”

He looks at me. Poor guy’s thinking I’m nuts.

We reach the docks and I park outside Warehouse 22. I hand the keys over and Filtrum unlocks the warehouse doors and we all file in.

“Leave the door unlocked,” I say to Vecchio. “You and me both still gotta get in here.”

“Are you sure about this, Kowalski?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You need to go stand someplace I can’t see you when I arrive, so, over in the shadows behind the machine. Don’t get too close, okay?” I raise my voice. “Circle round to the left, and don’t go too fast.” Somewhere nearby, the other Vecchio is waiting and, I hope, listening. I grab this Vecchio by the tie and pull him in for a quick kiss. “I love you,” I say, and this time I don’t need to hear his reply, because I already know.

 

*

 

Filtrum’s darting around in the cramped space at the top of the time machine. It’s like a cross between the deck of the Starship Enterprise and a DJ’s equipment, and it’s humming like a gigantic microwave. He’s pressing buttons and tapping at keyboards and I’m crouched down in a corner trying not to touch anything important, which is exactly what he told me to do. I’ve been there about a minute when Vecchio clambers up the ladder and squeezes into the corner next to me. “Nearly show time,” he murmurs to me.

“Why’d you do it?” I ask. “I told you not to get near the machine, but you did.”

“When I saw you again,” says Vecchio, and at that moment I hear my own voice yell out, “Hey! Filtrum!”

Filtrum jumps like he’s been electrocuted, and straightens up from a set of dials, and looks over the edge of the time machine, and says, “Ah, fuck.” Then he goes back to the time machine, working even faster now and muttering under his breath, “No time, there’s no time.” I want to reassure him that he does have enough time, because he did last time, so he shouldn’t panic, but I decide not to bother. He’d probably stop what he’s doing and give me a lecture on causality, and nobody wants that.

“Around now I’m really starting to believe everything you told me, and I’m freaking out ‘cause I wanna stop it happening,” says Vecchio. He settles back in our cramped little hiding space, and puts an arm around me. “When you start climbing all over the damned machine I freak out and run forward to try to stop you, and then there’s this flash of light and bam, here we are.”

“Detective,” Filtrum yells at the top of his voice, and he throws me and Vecchio a pointed look, so I know he’s talking to all four of us right now. “I’m sorry for your inconvenience, I really am, please believe me. But I warned you not to touch the machine, I warned you to stay back, and you wouldn’t, would you?”

The other me calls back to him, and Filtrum puts on a theatrical tone, shouting “Stay back! Don’t touch the machine! Get away from here!” Then, back to normal, he says, “See? I told you so.”

“Ass,” mutters Vecchio.

Filtrum carries on yelling down to me, and I carry on yelling back at him. I can hear myself threatening the professor, and roll my eyes at myself. I should’ve shut up threatening and just smashed the damn time machine to bits and saved us all this trouble. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

Filtrum spins around, throws a switch right by my head, and says to us, “Here we go.” Then he spins back and he’s babbling a warning at my other self, and then I see my shoulder and the top of my head, and my hand reaching out to try to grab Filtrum as he slams his own hand down on a big red button.

There’s a flash of white light.

 

*

 

I get to my feet and help Vecchio up. Filtrum’s standing over a screen, hands gripping the console.

On the screen numbers stream up and down, so fast I can’t read them.

It’s still dark. There’s no one else in the warehouse. Vecchio pulls out his cellphone, slaps it a couple of times, then puts it back in his pocket with a growl.

“Cellular telephony isn’t compatible with this machine,” Filtrum says, without looking around.

“It’s fried,” I translate. “So’s mine. What are we looking at?”

“Time,” says Filtrum through clenched teeth.

The numbers are still running, but it looks as if they’re getting smaller and smaller, from the thousands to the hundreds and then into double-digits, and then, as I watch, the streams of numbers trickle away and the screen goes blank. The lights on the time machine go out, one by one. The humming noise that’s been in the background so long I’ve forgotten it, stops, leaving a blissful silence. Filtrum sags like a burst balloon.

“Are we done?” asks Vecchio.

“I think we’re done,” I say.

 

*

 

I reach for my fortune cookie and say, “So why weren’t you there when I woke up?”

“I woke up first,” says Vecchio. “I was going to wake you up, but it was all happening exactly like you said it would, and you never said I was there when you woke up, so I got outta there.”

“The roller door,” I remember.

“I found a pipe and popped the lock,” he says. “Then I went and got a cab straight home. I was gonna call Fraser right away, but Frannie and Bobby were home.” He sighs and runs a hand over his head.

“You got sent back in time and you ended up babysitting?” I laugh, and Vecchio shrugs helplessly. Bobby’s a great kid, but he’s got all his mother’s curiosity plus her total lack of a sense of self-preservation. Last I heard he’d been licking plug sockets. Maybe he somehow inherited something off of his godfather, too. Whatever, he’s a kid who needs a lot of supervision.

“They finally left when she took him to kindergarten, and then I sat down and drew up a chart.”

“You drew a chart?” I find this ridiculously cute. It’s all I can do not to jump across the table right now and have him. ****

“Sure. It was the only way I could try to keep track. I figured I’d keep my head down until I had to go find you at the station and talk to you in the stationery closet. But then I remembered Filtrum.”

He’d gone and arrested the professor, and driven him down to the station.

“Thank God it’s like a madhouse down there anyway, or someone would’ve noticed I was acting like some kind of crazy Soviet spy. I got on the desk sergeant’s computer and emailed myself pretending to be you, and said you’d arrested the professor but you had another lead and you thought it’d take all day to follow up, so I should go ahead with the interview.” Vecchio shrugs and says, “I guess it worked.” He breaks open his own fortune cookie and reads aloud, “Don’t go getting in any time machines, doofus.”

I laugh, and grab the fortune out of his fingers. It says, _Nature, time and patience are the three best physicians_. “I guess that’s true about your ankle,” I say. “So how’d the interview go?”

“Fine,” Vecchio breaks up the fortune cookie with his fingers. He never eats them, he just breaks them up into dust, and then rolls the fortune into a tiny, tiny scroll.

The restaurant’s empty except for us and another couple on the other side of the room. The waiter’s sitting patiently at the till, waiting for us to get the hell out and let him close up for the night. It’s still Friday the twelfth, but for the first time it’s past ten at night. Filtrum’s safe back in the cells at the 27th, and there’s just one of me, and one of Vecchio.

“I got a confession out of him,” says Vecchio, brushing crumbs off his fingertips, “but I don’t know if we’ll be able to use it. The times and dates are all over the place. I’m pretty sure he made it so he’s got a water-tight alibi – every time he’s downtown talking to some guy with a hollow boat, he’s also having tea with the university council or something.” He looks at me. “Kowalski, he might get away with it.”

I take a breath. “Let’s figure it out on Monday,” I say.

Vecchio nods. “Okay. What does your cookie say?”

I bite the cookie in half and pull the fortune out, and read it aloud. “You are gonna get laid tonight.” I raise my eyebrows. “Wow, these things are really good.”

 

*

 

There’s just one more thing.

Monday morning, me and Vecchio walk into the bullpen and Huey says, “Hey, good work, guys.”

“Yeah,” says Dewey. “You didn’t get to arrest triplets, but you did good.”

“Detectives!” calls Welsh from his office doorway. He’s got his hands in his pockets and something that on anyone else’s face would look like a smile. “It warms my heart to hear of your success.”

Vecchio calls back, “Thank you, Lieutenant,” because he knows you should never refuse congratulations if Welsh offers them.

We go to our desks, and I’m about to try to figure out what earthly reason Welsh could have to be pleased with us when two people in black suits walk up to me.

“Detective Kowalski?” says the woman, then, turning toVecchio, “Detective Vecchio?”

Vecchio comes over as the two suits produce ID. “We’re special agents,” says the woman.

Vecchio takes the ID from the man’s hand, and says, “Bureau, huh?” He’s instantly on guard. He also looks kind of confused as he’s examining the ID. “I haven’t heard of this department before.”

“I’ll cut to the chase, Detectives, since we don’t have much time,” says the woman. “You’ll find, when you look through your records, that your case against Professor Filtrum has been successfully prosecuted and is now closed. You both did a great job, and you’ve been commended for that. Professor Filtrum has been taken into a secure prison, where he will be…” she waves a hand in the air, “assisting us with our further investigations into other projects. I mean, cases.”

“Wait,” I say. “What?”

“We’d like to apologise for any inconvience or distress you may have experienced,” says the male suit, taking his ID back from Vecchio. “This is quite new to us all, so I’m sure you understand how easily this sort of thing can get out of hand. We’ve worked hard to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.”

“You can’t just take our case away,” I say, latching on to the one thing I’ve understood so far. “It’s our case! I got a carload of evidence down in lock-up – ”

“You’ll find everything in order,” says the woman smoothly, gesturing to some files that are on my desk that I’d swear weren’t there when I walked in five minutes ago. “We even did the paperwork. Thank you for your assistance, Detectives. We won’t trouble you any further.”

They turn and walk out, and I swing round to Vecchio with my mouth hanging open. “Tell me that didn’t just happen!”

“I have no idea what that even was,” says Vecchio, staring after the two suits.

I flick open the top file and start to read through it. Then I hand the next one on the pile to Vecchio.

After about ten minutes’ reading and shuffling and swearing under our breath, we look up at each other. I’m holding a newspaper article from yesterday that says the DA mentioned the sterling work of the Chicago Police Department in uncovering a dangerous smuggling racket. There’s a picture of me and Vecchio looking pleased with ourselves outside the courthouse.

“This is fucked up,” I say. “What happened yesterday?”

“You know,” says Vecchio, sitting down on the edge of my desk, “I feel like I could use a vacation. I bet Welsh would give us some leave if we asked.”

I sit next to him, still staring at the newspaper clipping. Vecchio reaches over and takes the file out of my hands and closes it.

“Fraser said they’re having some kind of Service festival soon,” I say vaguely. “We could go dance round a maypole and wrestle a bear or whatever they do.”

“Couple of weeks’ leave,” says Vecchio. “And we could maybe take my chart from Friday, and that logic book, and these files, and maybe Fraser could figure out what the hell happened.”

“And I could brush up on my French,” I say. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

I take his hand, and this time, I won’t have to let go.


End file.
